


98 Days and Back Again

by Dancing_Phalangess



Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: Erin and Holtz are gay for each other, Erin centric, Erin kind of needs a hug, F/F, Light descriptions of self harm, Mentions of Mental Illness, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Some Abby/Erin bonding, and a blanket, maybe some tea, mentions of past bullying, some Holtz past mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancing_Phalangess/pseuds/Dancing_Phalangess
Summary: Every time she tries, it comes to nothing. Maybe that's what she's always going to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for self-harm, panic attacks, mentions of mental illness and past bullying.

It starts some time before her thirteenth birthday. She doesn’t mark the date, she just remembers putting on the new dress her parents got her for the party she didn’t want, that no one will come to, and seeing the vivid, scarlet marks on the top of her leg, barely covered by the hem. She yanks on it to make it longer before padding down the stairs to act like the daughter they want. (No one does come to the party, but on the bright side, she gets to keep all the party game prizes).

//

Her parents announce they’re moving when she’s fourteen and she can’t help but be a little bit hopeful. Until they tell her they’re only moving twenty minutes away so she can keep going to the same school.

They look at houses for months before they walk into the one that feels so wrong. Erin can’t explain it. She just knows she doesn’t want to live there.

So she tugs at her mother’s sleeve and whispers about seeing a cockroach. The realtor hears and glares at her, but her mother just rolls her eyes. “Well I didn’t see anything,” she hisses, like that settles the matter. She should be used to this by now, arguing with her parents about who did and didn’t see what, but she just can’t let them live there, _she can’t._

“It’s a ghost,” she blurts before she can stop herself, because that’s what it feels like. It’s the suffocating darkness of those nights where she waited for Mrs Barnard to appear, the same prickling feeling across her skin that tells her whatever it is isn’t looking to be friends.

Her mother hisses at her to shut up, and her father seizes her arm and drags her out of there so quickly that she stumbles. Later, her skin is purple where he held her and she adds her own marks in too. At least this way, she gets to chose what hurts.

//

On Halloween, everyone in her class dresses up in sheets. They hide up and down corridors, behind desks, even in trash cans. By the end of the day her heart is hammering in her chest without slowing down and she feels dizzy. She knows how to make herself calm down, knows how to stop the humming across her skin like there’s a live wire at her fingertips.

There’s quite the collection there now, angry marks, some faded and silvery, others still scarlet, one barely closed. Adding another doesn’t feel like a failure. It feels like winning, and power. At least she has this, whatever they do to her, she has this.

It should be late enough for the school to be empty when she finally does push open the door. Maybe she’ll see the janitor mopping the floors or someone trying to scrub graffiti from the walls, a teacher holed up in a classroom because it’s quieter there than at home and the marking needs to get done. But no one who will bother her. No one who will even notice the ghost girl.

She doesn’t expect the gang outside the restroom door until she’s flying into the lockers. The crash throws around the walls of the hall, still echoing even after she crumples to the ground. They take her books, rip them apart. There’s a torn out article buried at the bottom of her bag, almost reduced to pulp now, but there’s still a few words that they can read.

_They talk to me._

She cut it out of the newspaper after her mother had thrown it away.

One girl, the tallest, screeches with laughter. She sounds like a pterodactyl. Then she grabs Erin’s chin, crushing her jaw in her fist. “Open wide,” she snarls and she does because she has no choice, because it hurts, and the girl shoves the paper into her mouth. It’s covered in old bits of food and leaked juice. She gags, and not just because the girl has shoved it right into the back of her throat.

They leave her on the floor, choking and sobbing, the remains of her things scattered in pieces around her.

//

Abby’s the new girl and she zones in on Erin on the first day, throwing herself down in the empty chair beside her, not seeming to care that seats are supposed to be assigned. She picks up Erin’s copy of _Lord of the Flies_ and snorts. “Put women on that island and you’d have an advanced civilization by lunch.”

Erin doesn’t let herself like her. Either Abby’s too new to have heard what a loser she is, or this is part of a prank. Either way she’s going to be humiliated and dumped by second period. So she answers Abby in monosyllables, making it clear she isn’t going to fool for it and doesn’t want to be friends anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

But by lunchtimes she’s still there, although she’s starting to mutter about tough crowds and keeps saying stuff like “What? I think there’s a moth crawling on your lips there that might not have caught that.”

Erin looks at her then. “Look, I know you’re just pulling some prank on me, so get it over with. What, did they just pull you in from some other school so they can pretend like I just imagined you?”

Abby blinks at her. “What’s happening here?”

“You tell me,” Erin snaps, or tries too. She’s not good at aggressive.

“Yeah, I just got here from the ass end of nowhere, so you’re gonna have to fill me in. Is this some sort of confuse-the-new-girl thing?”

She’s serious. Or at least Erin thinks she is. She’s not great at reading people either, but no one’s looking at them, struggling to hide giggles, Abby isn’t sneaking winks to kids in the cafeteria. Sara, the class president, even came to introduce herself to Abby and managed a half nod in Erin’s direction. No mention of ghosts at all.

Still, she’s not going to risk this falling apart all over again. So she tells Abby everything, right there and then and gives her the chance to dump her lunch on her head and walk away to join the other less crazy kids.

“Cool,” Abby says when she’s finished through a mouthful of sandwich. “What did this ghost look like?”

That night, she leaves the blade where it is.

//

Before she’s twenty five, she knows they were right. There’s no such thing as ghosts. She’s crazy. So she takes the book she wrote with Abby and burns both copies, making sure to get her fingers caught in the flames.

Her parents are thrilled.

She gets into Princeton.

They buy her a car.

She does everything she can to shed the ghost girl, including turning her back on Abby. It’s hard, harder than anything she’s done in her life to ignore the phone calls and emails, but she does it because the marks on her skin are growing deeper and she knows exactly where her arteries are and how hard she needs to press to reach them.

She does talk to Abby one last time though, to explain. Not about the arteries, but the rest of it. Her friend doesn’t get it, she turns away in disgust and hurt, but Erin walks away at the end of it, wishing it felt more like a victory.

//

Climbing is tough. She might not be Ghost Girl anymore, but she’s a woman and they still want to kick her down. She’s the only girl in her Princeton class and they treat her like a glorified secretary, even expecting her to get the coffee for seminars. And she does it because she so wants them to like her, to accept her as one of them. On the last day of the semester, a man named Jackson brings lattes and biscuits and they slap him on the back and tell him what a bro he is. They don’t even tell her thanks.

But there’s still a victory when she graduates on top with a couple of shiny awards to go with her certificate.

Then she’s a professor with her own classroom and her own students and she hasn’t heard Ghost Girl in years. Her boss even talks about tenure.

She keeps it all together with a calm smile and sharp things on her skin. Even now, it’s still so noisy. Shouts don’t follow her down the hall anymore, but there’s a constant buzzing in her head, a humming on her skin, a thousand things that could go wrong on loop all at once. Blood makes it quiet. Like all those thoughts have a place to escape from, and she can tug her sleeves over the bottom of her palms and think about electromagnetic particles.

And somehow, seeing the scars and open wounds convince her she’s not crazy.

Until an old man asks for her by name and she’s Ghost Girl all over again.

//

When she goes to see her once-best-friend, her hands are trembling. Her fingers fumble with the sleeves of her jacket, yanking them down past her wrists, then she clenches them, her nails digging into her palms. It helps, makes it easier to breathe, easier to walk into the make-shift lab and face Abby.

Abby doesn’t want to face her. Her old (only) friend barely looks at her, and when she does it’s with a scowl and not-at-all hidden disgust. She looks her up and down in the tweed suit and heels, listens to her prattle on about her job and tenure and by the end of it, she’s looking at Erin like her parents did when her name appeared on a book about ghosts.

And then there’s her, Jillian Holtzman, Holtz, apparently, looking every bit the mad scientist with her quiffed hair and goggles almost as big as her face. “Come here often?” she says, although she must already know the answer to that question.

But still, Erin introduces herself, just as her. Erin. Not Doctor Gilbert, not professor. Just Erin.

Then she tries again to beg Abby to just take down the book. Because she needs this, she needs the tenure, she needs her job, she needs her status that she’s scratched and clawed and made endless cups of coffee for, she needs her parents to look at her like they like her, she needs them to talk about her at family functions instead of glossing over her existence like she’s a badly behaved dog.

Abby just laughs at her though. The book stays.

Then there’s the recording of a ‘ghost’, and for a moment she feels a thrill shoot through her, the same one she used to get when they worked on science fair projects together or explored falling apart house. It’s being on the brink of hope that finally she might be right. That she can finally stop feeling crazy. When all that comes out is the queef, it’s like being back in the hallway with paper, pens and plastic Halloween decorations bouncing off her back.

She hates that they can make her feel like she’s a weak kid all over again, that she’s no better than the dirt on the ground, that she’s crazy, even though they’re the ones still chasing ghosts. It starts the itching on her skin. Her fingers flex.

But then she mentions the ghost and Ed Mulgrave and Abby and Jillian are rushing out of the door, screaming at her to come on. Even when Abby tells her she’s not invited, she keeps following and Erin finally gets her to agree to take her name off the book if she’d just get in the car and hurry the hell up.

It should be a victory, but it’s not.

//

Fired. Fired, fired, fired.

Failure.

Fuck up.

Eyes fix on her as she walks down the corridor with her life in her hands. It all fits in a box. It’s pathetic.

She knows she deserves the barely hidden smirks, the eyes that don’t meet hers, like crazy might be catching. She thought she’d come so far from Ghost Girl, but she hadn’t got anywhere at all. All along she’d been right down there on the floor where her classmates had shoved her. Alone, without even Abby to tug her to her feet.

An hour ago, she’d been so happy. Finally, _finally,_ she had proof. She’d seen a ghost. Abby had seen it too, and Holtz. She had goo in her hair. It was real and she’d felt like scraping the gunk from every inch of her body and mailing it to her parents. Instead she washed it down the drain along with everything she had worked for.

She doesn’t go straight to the lab. Instead she leaves the box in her car and finds a public bathroom. Maybe she isn’t crazy now, but she’s not anything else either. And the noise is so loud. It’s screaming, screaming, screaming, and this time it has so many voices: her mother’s, her father’s, Jenny Spillet’s and her gang, classmates she never spoke to but she can remember the sound of their insults. She’s shaking so hard and it only stops when she draws the blade deep enough for blood to spill onto the bathroom floor.

Then she goes to find them.

//

Holtz wins her over with a wink and some questions. Dancing in the lab helps too, even when she sets fire to things and sends Erin’s heart jumping into another dimension.  
They still get laughed at, she still gets called crazy, but at least now she’s not alone. They’re the Ghost Girls and that’s so much better than being girl.

When the news breaks and they’re splashed all over the headlines, her spine goes rigid. She doesn’t want to leave the safety of the Chinese takeaway, but it’s the only chance she has of proving it.

Then there’s a ghost in a box and she knows it’s stupid, but she’s so close to being believed, to not being one fry short of a Happy Meal, and that means too much for her to resist opening the box.

At least the annoying man believes her after he’s been thrown from a window. No one else does though. Her own boyfriend calls her nuts.

It feels so good to punch one of them at last that she doesn’t think about the consequences until it’s hers screwed up face in the newspaper. They’ve dug up her past too, put her ‘issues’ right there in black and white for the entire nation to read and she gets a phone call from her mother.

“We thought this nonsense had stopped,” she snaps, taking the same approach her father always has. They’ve spent her life playing good cop and bad cop (“We just want you to be healthy, sweetie”/”If I hear one more fucking word about _ghosts_ , I’ll lock you in one of those places where they feed you broccoli through a straw”).

When she’s done with that, she finds a bathroom.

Holtz, though, she pretends not to even see the article and Erin loves her for that so much that she physically aches.

//

Then they’re famous and people are putting up signs in neon lights and she has three best friends in the world and it’s been 43 days.

And her heart feels like it’s going to crack her ribs apart when Jillian shrugs when she’s asked where the ghosts end up. “Michigan, I think.”

To Erin, she gives a tiny, private wink.

It’s where her parents live.

Despite the media frenzy and the crowds of fans, they still don’t believe her. Her father calls her on a Tuesday to ask her when she’s going to get a real job. Her mother calls to tell her she’s found another therapist, a very good, very discreet one. They get their doctor to call to offer a new brand of medication. They’re happy to buy the something-in-the-water theory and Erin knows they’ll never see her as anything more than a crazy, attention seeking child.

//

It’s Halloween and Erin’s sipping a cinnamon spice latte, hunting down Pokemon with Patty when they walk into a ghost. Literally. Well, a man in a sheet handing out flyers.

He laughs when he sees them and holds up his hands (a difficult job under a bed sheet). “Woah, don’t bust me,” he jokes.

Patty brushes him aside to catch a Rattata. “I got so many of these nasty things, it’s like this place is breeding them,” she mutters angrily, like it’s all the man in the sheet’s fault.  
Erin doesn’t say anything at all and keeps her head down until they’ve moved on. She clasps her hands over her elbows and walks too quickly for Patty’s liking.

“What’s your problem? Was your granddaddy in the KKK or something?”

“Of course not.” She doesn’t elaborate though. There’s an iron fist in her chest.

“You do know you’re a Ghostbuster, right?” Patty demands when they’re almost back at the fire station and almost jogging.

Erin doesn’t answer. She’s thinking about other people with childish costumes and paper scrunched in their hands, remembering what if felt like to have the corners scratching at the back of her throat and no room to breathe. She remembers gagging and spitting, but sheets coming across her mouth, hands clamped so she couldn’t even yell. It didn’t end there.

_Jenny had knelt in front of her. “You know, there’s one way to prove you’re not a liar.” And she’d wrapped her sheet around Erin’s head, her face, and the paper- it was impossible to take even a single breath and when she could no longer tell if the blackness was because of the sheet or her brain letting go, they pulled them off and she’d fallen gasping and choking to the floor._

They’ve found the fire station, and Patty is still casting her the side eye (and the full on stare). She hates herself more than a little in that moment, because it shouldn’t matter so much. It was years ago, so many that she can’t even remember the names of the girls at Jenny’s side.

Only that doesn’t help when there’s no air in the fire station and she wonders if she really will come back as a ghost. Then she can haunt her parents and they’ll know at last that she’s not a liar, or a freak.

She can’t feel the floor beneath her, she can’t feel anything, except sick. The room isn’t just spinning, it’s shimmering, like she’s looking at it through a layer of smoke (maybe Holtz has set the place on fire).

Her body- she’s weightless. Not just that, gone. A mist. A ghost. Maybe-

Eye above her that aren’t human. Bulbous, orange eyes.

Aliens are real too.

Her parents are going to section her.

Someone’s tugging at her sleeve.

She’s pulling on her mother’s, begging to leave as the dread threatens to crush her.

Someone’s-

“No!” she gasps, or tries to, maybe she doesn’t make a sound at all, but she tucks her arm into her chest, curls herself into a ball. They can’t see her.

The world comes back in pieces.

“Erin, baby, I just want to take that sweater off. You got coffee all on it.”

One of Patty’s fluffy couch cushions tickles the inside of her elbow.

There’s a strong smell of cinnamon, of coffee, and something burning.

Hotlz.

Not burning, in front of her. She’s the big orange eyes. Goggles, not an alien They’re on her head now, though, pushing back loose strands of hair. “What’s up?”

Erin blinks at her. She can feel herself shaking. There’s sweat gathering at the neckline of her sweater, but she makes no move to take it off. There’s no sign of the others, not Patty who’d been there two minutes ago, or Abby. Just Holtz with the goggles and one of Erin’s own hooded sweatshirts almost falling to her knees (she likes them big, it means she can disappear).

“That was kinda weird, not gonna lie.”

“What?” Erin still feels like she’s in another dimension. Holtz is right there talking to her, close enough to touch, but surreal too.

“I thought you and Patty were just out looking for those cartoon things, and then she comes back with you all wigged out saying something about a dude in a sheet.” But Holtz shrugs, like none of it really matters unless Erin wants it to.

She kind of loves her for that.

“Where is Patty?”

“Gone to get you a candy apple.”

Erin just stares at her.

“Sugar. And, I’m quoting directly here, ‘I’m surprised my tittly didn’t get a papercut picking her up’.”

She’s always been a bit on the wrong side of skinny. Maybe it has something to do with endless bullying and parents who think you’re an attention seeking loser. It hadn’t led to much of an appetite. Even as she got older, the constant knot of fear and dread kept her waist small. Abby had always envied her. Erin had always wished she looked more like her.

“You know, my sister got panic attacks. After my mom died. She’d do all kinds of crazy stuff to make sure the rest of us were safe, even if it didn’t make any sense.” Holtz says it as easily as she’d announce the day’s weather as she pours something suspicious into a glass and pushes it into Erin’s hand. “Drink.”

Erin drinks. It tastes of burnt rubber and candy floss. She doesn’t ask. For once, it’s quiet inside her head. “Where is she now? Your sister.”

“She lives in Utah. She teaches elementary school, likes the quiet life. My dad collects bugs in a shack in New Jersey. We get together at Thanksgiving, sometimes.”

This somehow makes her feel better. Holtz’s sister is hardly living the life of a rock star, but she’s settled. It sounds like she’s happy. Something Erin would give anything to be. She remembers the toast Jillian gave after they were done with all the crazy Rowan stuff, about what it felt like to finally have a real family. At the time she’d raised her glass with all the others. Afterwards, she’d found Holtz in her lab somewhere between midnight and dawn.

“My parents sent me to so many therapists,” she confesses to a fluffy blue cushion. “They gave me different pills and told me they were candy and when none of them stopped me talking about ghosts, they fired the therapist and got angry instead. Especially my dad. When I started hanging around with Abby, he banned her from the house. I came home once to find half my stuff gone from my room and he told me I’d get it back when I learned to behave like a normal person.”

Holtz is quiet for a long time, like she’s waiting for Erin to carry on. When she doesn’t, Jillian lifts her gaze from the same pillow Erin was talking to and looks right at her. “That sucks.” She says.

It’s nothing and it’s everything. A lot more than the people who told her that her parents only wanted ‘what was best for her’. It’s not life changing advice, but that’s not what she needs or wants. Enough therapists have tried to force that down her throat in her lifetime.  
“Hotlz?”

“Yeah?”

“It sucks about your mom too.”

//

It’s been 71 days. She didn’t think she’d make it this far. Especially when she saw the man in the sheet. But Holtz had kept her talking, then Patty had got back with the candy apple and insisted on watching while she ate it, then Abby was there too and they were filling her in and there was another round of _You need sugar/tea/a shot of vodka, What happened? I’m gonna punch that guy._ Erin had avoided Abby’s eyes. She knew what she’d see there would be more than the surprised concern of the others.

Now they’re about to be pulverized by a very angry ghost. Erin steps in front of Abby, although she doesn’t have a clue what she plans to do. She just stands there because they’ve both lost their weapons and maybe she can buy her friend two extra seconds and-

There’s a crackle like lightning and a roaring screech and she’s covered in slime, again.

But she’s alive. They’re both alive.

Holtz and Patty come running, weapons still raised and wide eyed.

Erin spits out a mouthful of slime.

“Man, that was some shit!” exclaims Patty as Holtz grabs Erin by the shoulders.

She glares into her eyes, goggles askew on her head then grabs each of her hands in turn, turning them over and dropping them before she feels along Erin’s ribcage, her waist and moves on to her legs.

“Uh, what you doing there, Jilly?” says Abby, sounding more than a little bit weirded out, which is saying something given what she does for a living.

Holtz stands up and nods to Erin. “You’re okay,” she confirms.

“Except for the slime,” Erin deadpans.

Holtz saps her goggles back on and grins. “At least I got to second base.” She winks and Erin feels herself blush from her neck to her hairline. At least the slime should cover that up.

It’s another twenty minutes sitting in the stuff before she can even get to the shower back at the fire station. She hates undressing there because there are no locks on the doors (Holtz needed the bolts for an invention) and they have a knocking policy, but Erin and Patty are the only ones who follow it.

So she showers quickly, only taking any time over her hair; she has to shampoo it three times before it feels smooth again. When she’s finally satisfied that she’s rid of the worst of the slime (it’ll appear in dribs and drabs for the next few days) she gets out of the shower and immediately wraps herself in two towels, guarded against intruders.

But for once, she’s clothed by the time Abby barges in, even knocking and leaving at least two seconds before throwing open the door anyway. The tiny window is open, steam escaping through the hatch and once glance at Abby’s face makes Erin want to follow it.

She tries to lean casually against the wall, but it’s further back than she calculated and she’s left with her legs stretched a little too far in front of her and aching shoulders.

Abby stands in front of the door so Erin can’t leave without side stepping her. “You didn’t tell me you’re still having panic attacks.”

Erin shrugs. There’s nothing more she can say. When they were in high school, she had them a lot. Normally at the thought of going to school, or at lunch in the restrooms, sometimes waking up from another nightmare. Abby had witnessed a few, it wasn’t like she could stop them when they took hold. But that was years ago and now she should...what? Be over them?

Her legs are starting to ache now too. With a sigh, Erin slides down the wall onto the floor.

Abby joins her.

They spent many lunch periods like this, hiding out in bathrooms or the library. Before Abby, Erin spent them alone, normally locked in cubicles where no one could get to her, even if they found her. Instead they’d throw water under the door, chant insults, or bang repeatedly on the door, shaking it in its hinges under the bell rang.

“Has it been going on all this time?”

She nods. Yes. “It doesn’t matter though, it’s not an issue, it’s-”

“It does matter.” She says it firmly, definitely, but without anger.

Erin hasn’t had anyone to care for more than ten years. It’s her own fault. She rests her head on Abby’s shoulder, trying to say more things than she can articulate.

Abby brings a hand to the side of her head and holds her there for a moment.

Before-

“Yeah, you’re kinda getting water all over me.”

And the moment’s broken.

“Sorry.”

“You got slimed for me, we’ll call it even.”

//

Erin slams her apartment door, locking it behind her. They don’t go home a lot anymore, but she needs to be alone now, needs to be away from there with her friends watching and asking and caring. It’s been 98 days, but it’s so hard to drag oxygen into her hagged lungs and there’s an anvil in her chest crushing her and dragging her down in equal measure.

They had been so happy, high after a successful bust. Abby dialled for the Chinese, which took just as long now as it had done when they lived upstairs, Holtz had put on a 90s horror flick with Jodie Foster that normally would have freaked her out, but she was with her friends and they were making fun of it and at the most gruesome part, Holtz had got a slice of ham and slapped it over her face with eye holes cut out then tapped Patty on the shoulder, she’d screamed and thrown popcorn everywhere and Erin and Abby had laughed so hard they almost fell off the couch and-she’d just been happy.

And then...then she wasn’t.

Maybe it started with the blood. Maybe it was the adrenaline rushing through her veins that had finally crashed. Maybe it was the glimmer of a knife in the movie. Or maybe it was just her. Crazy, messed up, Ghost Girl. It’s certainly fucked up to do what she does.

She’d tried to ignore it, push it down, keep laughing with her friends and adding wontons to Abby’s soup when she wasn’t looking, but it had infected her, crawling beneath her skin and right into the marrow of her bones and she _misses_ it. She just misses it so much. The instant shimmer of calm that cloaks her shoulders like a blanket. It stops panic, tears, everything in an instant.

She misses it.

So she breaks 98 days, shattering everything she’s done in a moment.

And she doesn’t care.

Maybe she will by the morning. But then it doesn’t matter, because there’s no string of days to hold onto, no growing number, so she can just ease her guilt with another scar.

Ted Mosby is telling his kids about the time his best friend banged his ex when someone knocks on her door. “Erin?” Holtz calls through the letterbox before she’s had a chance to answer. “Let me iiiiiin.” She flaps the letterbox a few times.

Erin sighs and pushes herself off the couch. She’s pulled on on oversized hooded sweatshirt that she thinks might actually be Abby’s. She folds her hands into the sleeves. She loves wearing other people’s clothes, they feel like comfort and hugs and warmth. They’re proof she has friends, actually friends who she spends enough time with to end up with their things mixed in with hers.

“Hey,” she says, casually, when she pulls open the door. Like Holtz has just come by for coffee and a catch up. Like she invited her here.

“Yo, Ghost Girl.”

There’s something in Holtz’s expression that Erin can’t read. Something beyond her determined nonchalance. She steps aside to let her in.

Not that she really needs an invitation. She throws herself down on the couch without even taking her shoes off, laying back on it like she’s in a therapist’s office. Not that they actually have those. Well, they do, but you’re just meant to sit on them normally. Although Erin was more of a look-at-your-lap-say-nothing kind of person.

“So at the end of the movie, Clarice goes to find this old boss of the killer’s but she doesn’t know that Gumb has moved in so she’s standing there all tell-me-everything-you-know and she sees this moth, and- short of it is she shoots him, gets the girl out of the pit and Lecter skips off to be happy eating brains somewhere.”

She’d run out before the end of the movie. Said she’d forgotten about a Skype session with her parents, the first one in months. “How lovely,” she deadpans.

“So...how’s Michigan?”

“Michigan’s fine. Full of supernatural phenomena though.”

Holtz grins. “Have they caught on yet?”

“No. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything. Power surges, dodgy plumbing, probably a lot of kids on drugs.” With the high she’s still on, it’s almost funny. The lengths her parents will go to just to deny she was right all along. Because that will mean admitting they’re bigger assholes than they can imagine.

Although she snorts in derision, Holtz’s eyes harden.

“Can I get you anything? A drink, Pringles?” Erin’s nervous, suddenly, although she can’t imagine why.

“Nah, I’m good.” Holtzmann reaches into her bag and produces a bag of Cheetos. “Got it covered.”

Erin curls on the other end of the couch, the only part free, her legs tucked close to her chest.

Holtz throws a Cheeto at her. “So you never take your clothes off, what’s up with that?”

“I’m sorry?” Erin’s pretty sure she’s blushing. Somehow, this always happens around her colleague.

Only Holtz bites her lip and drops the Cheetos onto the coffee table. Nervous, for maybe the first time ever.

Something starts to coil itself in Erin’s chest. She’s suddenly certain she doesn’t want to be here, having this conversation. Anything that can make this woman serious for even a moment is something she doesn’t want to talk about.

“Like when you had that panic attack, you wouldn’t let me take off your sweater, even though there was coffee all over it, and then with the slime...More than once, actually. It’s just something I’ve noticed…” she trails off and sits up, leaving a wider gap between them. “I assumed it was just ‘cos you’re sort of a prude but then with the sweater...that doesn’t even make sense because you had a shirt on underneath.”

She’s talking and Erin doesn’t want to stop her, because then she’ll have to answer. Her hands claw around her knees, nails pressing into her skin beneath her pants.

“I know it’s none of my business or anything, but you’re always doing this crazy shit for us like jumping into ghost portals and you know we...I, well, I kind of love you, y’know?”

What are you talking about? The only way out of this is denial, but she can’t make the words come. Instead she just opens and closes her mouth, clinging harder to her knees like she might be able to disappear right into herself. Holtz has finally stopped talking and she’s looking at Erin with a kind of sincerity that she can’t remember ever seeing on her.

“I’m probably totally wrong and just jumping to crazy conclusions, but just in case I’m not. I know what I’m thinking and I think you know what I’m thinking so if you just tell me I’m wrong I’ll totally leave it.”

Tell her she’s wrong. That’s all she needs to do. Only there’s a difference between just not dropping it into conversation and outright lying. And Jillian’s shown up here. She’s barged in and asked some weird questions and got out some Cheetos and Erin can’t just look right into her eyes and lie to her. Especially not when she looks like that.

“I…” Erin stammers, praying for anything to get her out of this. Even an email from her parents with a list of therapists in her area. That she knows how to deal with (okay, so it’s a shitty and unhealthy way of dealing, but this, this she has no idea of).

She hasn’t opened up to anyone, really, since she heard the therapist telling her mother she was looking for attention. Not even Abby. She doesn’t know about this; she never knew-

Oh, God, she’s crying.

This wasn’t meant to happen. None of this was meant to ever-

Holtz, Jillian, is right there, close enough so her breath catches strands of Erin’s hair and her hands closes over hers. “Erin? Hey, it’s okay.”

Then she’s crying on her shoulder, and Holtz has her arms around her, but she doesn’t do this, she doesn’t cry like this, and always, always alone. But Holtz just keeps telling her it’s okay. There’s even another ‘I love you’, but how? How can she possibly love her now?

It doesn’t take her too long to calm down. She makes herself stop crying and breathe steadily, or it’ll melt into a full scale panic attack, and Holtz has to already think she’s crazy.

Only that’s not how she looks at her when Erin finally draws away. She looks like they’ve just been watching _Up_ , or _The Notebook._

“You know this doesn’t change anything, right? I’m still totally going to drag you when you fold napkins on your lap.”

Erin pokes her. “How many suits have you set fire to now?”

Jillian shrugs. “It’s a talent.”

Pause. “Really though. The others don’t know, and I’m not going to tell them. Not unless you want me to.”

“No. Not now. Not ever, actually.”

“Hey, I’m not gonna make you do anything, but they love you too.”

Erin nods. Maybe it’s true. Holtz isn’t lying to her, she knows that much. But love has always felt dispensable. One wrong move and you’re out, kind of thing. Or can be exchanged at any time for a better model. She’s lost too many friends, too much family, over the years to think anyone could feel any differently. _Abby though_ , a tiny voice at the back of her head reminds her, _she’s always been loyal, even when you weren’t._

She’s not a child anymore, and not everyone is her parents.

Erin smiles at last, offers her hand to Holtz, who threads her fingers between hers. “I need some time.”

Of course Jillian nods. Because she never pushes, never asks for too much, never pries where she’s not involved. Only she is involved now. She’s the first person to know and she’s not backing away in horror or getting that quirk on her lips that says this girl’s nuts.

She’s holding Erin’s hand.


End file.
